


changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes

by qianwanshi



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Everyone lives, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, M/M, fast burn, houseboat au, nonlinear timeline, seaman puns, this is very explicit if that bothers you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:07:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27363991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qianwanshi/pseuds/qianwanshi
Summary: A lot can change in a year.Richie buys a houseboat and invites Eddie to move in with him.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 41
Kudos: 365





	changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes

**Author's Note:**

> Here it is! the long awaited (??) houseboat au! If you follow me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/qianwanshi) you've surely seen me yelling about and sharing snippits of this for a while now, and here it is! I'm nervous about this one so idk, I hope you enjoy!
> 
> This is not the most realistic of fics in that there are no problems and everything is good and happy lol so if that's not your sort of thing idk what to tell you
> 
> Thanks as always to u Hollers & Tiff & Atlas for proofreading, brainstorming, and listening to me losing my mind the entire time I wrote this.

August. Eddie wakes up, showers, puts on the clothes he’d set out the night before, and kisses Myra before leaving for work. NPR on the radio, as always, some man with a nasal voice is talking about the struggles of being funny in ‘ _our PC era_ ’. He briefly considers changing stations, but the fact that he knows no music that’s come out in the last decade keeps him from following through.

The man has a nice cadence, at least. Easy to fall into while he drives, easy to scoff at while he’s giving the guy behind him at his light the finger for honking at him because he was half a second behind the light change. A mobile coffee order isn’t just going to place itself, for fuck’s sake.

Coffee, work, emails, greetings, meetings that could be emails, water, more water, hydration is key to a healthy body, avoiding coworkers, _more_ emails. It’s Thursday, he knows it is. Second Thursday of the month. He’s consulted his Outlook calendar no less than fifteen times after lunch. 

Exhausted, he leaves work slowly. He’s not dawdling, he’s taking his time, life isn’t always a rush. It’s what he tells himself. 

He goes to the gym. Not for any particular reason. A run will help to wake him up a little, it always does. He keeps a change of clothes in the car all the time, freshly washed and stored under the back seat in his bag. 

Change, run, run, run, shower, change, go home. It’s already full dark, summer days getting shorter and shorter. 

“Busy day?” Myra asks from her seat at the kitchen island, watching Eddie portion out his carefully meal-prepped dinner. She looks interested when Eddie peeks over at her, but she sounds unsure. 

“Yeah.” One portion chicken, one brown rice, one snap peas, arranged across a plate for reheating because the plastic of the tupperware is bad for food in the microwave. “Marco held up our meeting for ten minutes because he wanted to show everyone pictures of his dog.”

It was a cute dog, but there’s a time and place for show and tell and a financial meeting isn’t it. 

“How unprofessional,” Myra gripes.

Eddie feels vindicated as the microwave counts down behind him. 

“Were you at the gym?” She asks next. “It’s Thursday.”

It is. It’s the second Thursday. 

“Oh no, is it?” The microwave beeps, giving him the excuse to turn around and pay attention to that instead. “Sorry, I completely forgot.”

Every second and fourth Thursday are the evenings they’d mutually agreed upon to set aside for sex, an idea Myra had found on some marriage blog for busy couples. 

“I just needed the run after work,” he explains. “I can—after I eat.” He checks his watch, it’s getting late. “We still have time.” 

“No, no.” Myra waves her hand. “I’m getting tired, too, we have early days tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees. 

He accepts his kiss when Myra walks past him out of the kitchen and pretends the relief isn’t there.

——

April. Eddie hands in his resignation letter on a rainy day. He’s had it typed and signed for a week by the time he leaves it in his boss’ mailbox on his way to lunch. He’s been waiting for the right time, a day where his commute leaves him in a good mood, or the sun shines bright and warm with early spring, but one never came. 

Instead the day is grey and grim and disgusting. He steps in a puddle and splashes his pant leg on his way into his office, and the dark sky barely allows him to shake off the tiredness clinging to his eyelids. He makes a coffee in the staff kitchen and sips it at his desk, refusing to feel the dread that lingers in his gut when he thinks about his inbox. If he has to pleasantly sign off on another dozen emails today he might lose his mind. 

He stares out the window at the endless grey. Skyscrapers bleeding into clouds seamlessly. 

‘ _I fucking hate New York,_ ‘ he thinks. 

That’s what does it. Why wait for the right day when he could instead choose the day that makes him want to run from the city until his legs ache and never look back? 

——

October. Group video calls are just something the Losers do sometimes now, a month and some after the events of Derry. Eddie has his phone propped up on his kitchen counter so he can unpack his boxes and slowly put everything where it belongs.

Bill and Richie are arguing over whether it’s weird or not to go to a movie theater alone while the rest of the Losers either listen or chime in. Eddie listens and sorts his silverware precisely. 

He shuffles away to open another box and Bev interrupts. 

“Wow, Eddie!” Richie and Bill shut up immediately. “Look at you getting around without the cane.”

“Barely,” Eddie corrects her. He can maybe shuffle a few feet without his cane. Can only use the bottom shelves of his cabinets because reaching any higher is too strenuous on his healing body. 

Still. He will share the news with his physical therapist and she will most certainly be proud of him. 

“Damn, Eds, all the ladies at bingo night are gonna go wild for you,” Richie says. 

“Hilarious.” Eddie baby-steps between his little table and cabinets with two plates, not daring to try lifting any more than that. “You try climbing a flight of stairs with three newly replaced ribs and we’ll see how you do.”

A strange look passes across Richie’s face, but just as quickly he’s back to being a motormouth. “Let’s do that, like a competition. Whoever doesn’t make it gets to be a distance marker like on Mount Everest.”

Several of the Losers express confusion at his assertion, which isn’t unusual, but does prompt him to spiral off into a long explanation. Apparently dead bodies are too difficult to clear off of Everest, so instead they become popular landmarks for climbers to measure their distance. 

“That’s so fucking grim,” Ben remarks. “Why do you know this?”

“Oh I was reading about it recently,” Richie says like this is just a normal thing to read about. “I saw that Everest movie with Josh Brolin and was curious.”

“Josh Brolin?” Bev asks. “Haven’t heard his name in a while.”

“He still hot?” Eddie asks without thinking. 

The room doesn’t go full silent, crickets don’t start chirping to maximize the awkwardness of the situation or anything, but the awkwardness is there. 

“Oh, uh, I realized kind of recently I had a crush on him in _Goonies_ ,” he explains. “And also that I’m not straight.”

The reactions are mixed, all positive, but an exciting blend of shocked stares and thrilled laughs and congratulations all around. Saying it out loud wasn’t even that scary, actually. It feels like relief.

——

January. Richie comes out to the Losers one evening through a group text message.

It’s a frigid Sunday and Eddie hasn’t left his drafty apartment in Washington Heights all day. He’s sitting curled up on his couch, the nice leather one he got to keep in the divorce, wrapped up in his scratchy blanket. It was a gift from Mike and he uses it every day, often wandering into his kitchen with it draped over his shoulders like a prickly cape to make himself something to drink. 

Supportive and loving responses pour in from everyone all at once, an excited fervor buzzing between them all. 

He calls Richie who relatively quickly he admits he’s been drinking. 

‘ _Not in a depressed way_ ’, Richie assures him. Social drinking, but alone. 

Eddie gives his own congratulations then.

“I needed it to be out there,” Richie says. 

“I get it,” Eddie says back. His own coming out was much the same, a weight off his shoulders, the most refreshing taste of freedom he’s ever had in his life.

“Hey, Eds.” Richie mumbles after a significant pause. “You know, right?”

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees, throat dry. “I know.”

——

October. There’s a package waiting for Eddie in the lobby of his building when he arrives home from work. It’s not huge, and he declines the offer of help a neighbor extends to carry it upstairs for him. He’s slow moving, careful to avoid stressing his injured side as much as possible. He bought a messenger bag when he decided to return to work, and it’s become very useful in his daily life.

The package fits inside with his laptop, just barely, flat enough but too wide for the flap to fully close. It’s good enough for him to get it into his apartment without struggling or hurting himself. 

On his kitchen table, box cut open, Eddie stares inside.

It’s a set of knives, ceramic blades the color of copper with handles shaped to match the grip of a hand perfectly. Set on top is a little slip of paper included that marks the delivery as a gift. The message only says: ‘ _for the new kitchen_ ’.

He knows who they’re from without needing even a moment to dwell on it. What gives him pause is _why_ Richie would send him an expensive set of knives (he Googles them, the complete set runs over four hundred dollars). 

‘ _Thanks for the gift?_ ‘ he messages to Richie.

It’s a while before he checks for his reply, busy cleaning up, stretching, doing his breathing exercises, counting the steps back and forth across his living room to mark his progress. It all feels good though. It feels like taking control back. 

When he does check later, over dinner, a response is there. 

‘ _It’s nothing crazy!_ ‘

Four hundred dollars feels a little bit like something crazy. 

‘ _You mentioned wanting to learn to cook and you’re only as good as your tools_ ‘

Eddie continues to stare at the set of knives, standing upright on his kitchen counter. Unopened, but displayed. 

It’s not a bad gift when he thinks about it. He had mentioned wanting to branch out in his cooking recently and having no idea where to start. The knives don’t feel like he’s being told _what_ to do, more like he’s been given the means to do what he already wants. 

He texts back. ‘ _Thanks_ ‘ And if he smiles a little at his phone, well, he’s alone. No one else has to know. 

——

August. Eddie’s on a plane to Derry. He’s just walked away from a car accident and he’s trying to convince himself the ache he’s feeling _isn’t_ whiplash. He always tenses up on planes despite knowing the statistics are in his favor. It’s not the flying, anyway, it’s the cramped spaces, the proximity to other people, the recycled air. 

He doesn’t want to be on this plane, and yet something dragged his feet to the airport despite all that. 

Memories. Friends. An Oath. 

——

January. Eddie’s on a plane to LA. The air is stale and too artificial cold in that uncomfortable way planes always are. He wants to sleep to encourage the next five hours to move more quickly, but he can’t settle his brain. It feels like his nerves are crawling under his skin. 

He lands and he’s overdressed. The turtleneck sweater, scarf, and coat he would freeze without in New York are too much for the mild LA winter. He strips his layers off in baggage claim and waits for his reasonable singular suitcase. This time he’s not packing to die. 

Richie is surprised to find Eddie standing in front of his door. His mouth hangs open before he smiles, a sunburst. They hug and fuss and Richie drags his bag into the foyer before he gives him the grand tour. Wide open bedroom with the unmade bed, office with big white shutters blocking the light, cozy living room with a fireplace and giant window looking out at the ocean, long narrow kitchen, a guest room in a loft with a leafy bamboo plant in the corner. It’s… more of a _home_ than Eddie expected it to be. It’s cozy. 

He uses the shower, desperate to clean himself from the plane. When he gets out his bag is in the guest room and Richie is missing, found after some searching in the walled-in backyard surrounded by high bamboo and a few select cacti, smoking a cigarette. 

Eddie goes to him, still damp with his hair beginning to curl up in the dry desert air. He’s been experimenting with leaving it natural since he came out, a little mini rebellion against the restraints that pre-Derry Eddie had lived under. They sit together comfortably, talking about plans and surprises and watching the sky change color as the sun drops lower and lower.

“I can’t believe you just showed up here.” Richie stubs out his second cigarette in the pink and yellow painted ashtray. He’s in a t-shirt and a light zip-up hoodie. There’s a slight chill in the air, but compared to home it’s perfectly pleasant to Eddie. 

“I used the address from your Christmas card.” Eddie grins at him, proud of his quick thinking and long-ingrained habit of keeping a handwritten address book. 

The waves crash in the distance, just foreign enough to Eddie’s ears that it sounds like the distant rumbling of a storm. 

——

September. When Eddie first comes back to work from his “family emergency” turned “medical crisis” with a new scar on his face and a cane to help him get around, he becomes a major topic of interest in his office. 

It eventually dies down when his coworkers realize that he isn’t going to be forthcoming with details. This shouldn’t be a surprise, since he’s never been one to bring his personal life into the office, but somehow they’re disappointed. 

That interest returns to a frenzied boil when he comes into the office one morning without his wedding ring. There’s a low-level murmur that spreads out for long enough that he starts to think he’s missed something, some meeting or rumor or big deal sports event. 

Marco finds him in the kitchen peeling open a yogurt container for a mid-morning snack and asks about the lack of ring. It makes Eddie clench his left hand into a fist, thumb grazing over the bare skin of his ring finger. 

“Yeah.” He stirs his yogurt into red and white strawberry swirls. “We split up.”

Some people in his office know Myra. The rest, he’d guess, have at least heard of her. He never had any photos on his desk, and they stopped going to office holiday parties several years ago after Myra reported being treated badly by someone in the office. 

“Wow.” Marco’s eyebrows raise. “Is this a congrats or a condolences situation?”

Eddie huffs. “Mixed bag.”

“Well, congra-dolences then,” Marco says. 

Marco’s eyebrows shoot even higher when Eddie laughs, surprised by the word mash-up. He’ll have to tell Richie about it, he loves stupid wordplay more than almost anything else. 

“Thanks.” Eddie allows himself a little smile. 

Word spreads, of course it does, but Eddie finds he doesn’t mind so much actually. Only a few people peek into his little office to say anything, most others knowing he hates blurring the lines between personal and work life. 

The divorce is a long road ahead of him, but he already feels better with the physical reminder gone. 

——

April. Word of his resignation moves fast in the office. People are talking about him already when he gets back from lunch. Eddie has been something of a hot topic in the office gossip for months though, it no longer really bothers him. 

He knows how it looks. How rapidly he’s made his choices one after the other. Divorced and quitting to move across the country for someone else in half a year? He’s put the cherry on top of the delicious office conspiracy sundae. 

They’re _still_ trying to figure out where the scar on his face came from. Still wondering about the cane he had when he first came back. 

He doesn’t offer them any details now, either. They don’t need to know and he has no interest in hearing their opinions about the choices he’s finally making for himself. He knows what he’s doing is right.

The rain doesn’t let up, and there’s still no sun when he goes back to his office to attend to his wall of emails, but he feels lighter.

——

November. Another group phone call. Ben and Beverly have just officially announced their intent to move in together. Maybe it’s fast, under normal circumstances, but nothing about any of their lives could ever be called _normal_. They get nothing but support from the rest of the Losers. 

“What about you, Eds?” Beverly asks. “Getting out there at all?” 

Eddie scoffs and several of the others on the call all jeer at him about it. A ‘ _come on!_ ’ from Bill and Ben groaning his name.

“No!” Eddie groans right back. “I don’t know.”

“Why not?” Bill pushes. “You’re good-looking, you could find someone on a dating app easily!”

He avoids looking over at his phone, pretending to be occupied with a stray string on his shirt. “Well…”

“Eddie!” Beverly gasps, catching on immediately. “Are you on a dating app?”

“Kind of.” His face burns, he has to resist the urge to fan himself. “I’ve never actually messaged anyone back.”

He’s gotten a handful of messages though, always finding something wrong with them. Too young, too forward, too pushy, too just sending a dick pic as a greeting. 

Finally looking at his phone, he sees the faces of his friends. They all look like they understand, or at least like they’re not going to push him any harder about it. They know, to a degree, how new all of this is to him. 

The one exception is Richie, whose video feed is paused and blurred out the way it gets when a user has another app open on top of the call. Eddie can see the muddy colors of him moving, but he says nothing. 

——

August. Eddie remembers Richie the moment he walks through the door. Before he’s even turned around, the sound of the gong enough to remind him without even seeing him. 

Then he _does_ see him.

Richie got _huge_. 

He’s over six feet, easily, infuriatingly. He’s broad, brash, loud, funny, aggravating, _strong_.

They arm wrestle, he doesn’t even know why. Richie looks as pleased as ever to have all attention on him, and Eddie feels… he doesn’t know, _something_ in his gut at the strong grip of Richie’s hand around his, how with his jacket off his arm flexes under the short sleeve of his shirt. 

Anxiety, it must be. Or maybe something in the food, he’s read enough conflicting articles about MSG, it could be responsible. He reminds himself to take a Pepto-Bismol when he gets back to his rental. 

He loses the arm wrestling match.

——

October. Living alone gives Eddie more free time than he’s used to having. He buys some puzzles to kill time since he’s given up on _Game of Thrones_. He takes out audiobooks to play while he builds and while he does the mild exercises he’s allowed to do, but there’s still just so much time in the day. 

Memories are still coming up all the time for all of the Losers. They call often with new-old stories. 

‘Do you remember your birthday party?”

‘I was remembering the baby sheep! Remember seeing them?’

‘We went to the arcade, remember?’

Some of them are embarrassing, just normal teenage embarrassing things but so freshly remembered they make him physically cringe. 

Others are… interesting, from the perspective of a recently Out adult. 

Like he definitely had a crush on Bill, now that he thinks about it. What he thought of as hero worship before was clearly something more than that. 

And, he thinks, maybe all the time as kids he spent barking at Richie was less about whatever he was yelling about and more about knowing it would get Richie to laugh. Would get Richie’s attention on him alone. 

He chooses not to linger on the incoming thought that he _still_ snaps over stupid things, still knowing Richie will laugh at him. 

——

March. Eddie’s still in bed. It’s ten in the morning on a Saturday and he’s allowing himself a rare moment to be lazy. Richie will be waking up soon and calling, and he has a little work to do later on, but he’ll be free.

Eddie knows if he mentions where he is how quickly it can turn into the two of them jerking off together. Juvenile or not, he can’t get enough of it. 

His phone rings as predicted. 

“Don’t freak out,” Richie says before Eddie can even answer. “I might have done something stupid.”

“What?” Eddie’s sitting up already, the slowly materializing haze he was in vanishing like fog. He’s definitely freaking out. “What happened? Is everything okay?”

“You know how Ben mentioned selling his boat?” Richie asks. 

“Yeah? Bev was getting seasick.” He’s in the same group chat as Richie, why would he not remember this. 

“I might have bought it.”

Eddie doesn’t consider himself easily stunned into silence, but Richie does have an unusual talent for it. 

“You bought Ben’s boat.”

“Yep.” Richie’s smile is audible. “Houseboat, actually. Full bedroom, decent bathroom, kitchen, living area.”

“What are you going to do with a houseboat?”

“I dunno…” He sounds… shy almost, in how he trails off. “You, me, the sea. How do you feel about early retirement?”

Eddie finds himself shocked silent for a second time in just a handful of minutes. Not because he’s thrown off by the suggestion, but because he’s thrown off by himself actually considering the option. He thinks about his apartment. It’s not bad, small, not a top choice but something he settled for because he was desperate. It’s been drafty all winter, his shower leaks (he thinks it’s also growing mold, a nightmare), he can hear his neighbors having sex more frequently than he would ever like to. 

“Yeah.” He says it without even being completely aware. 

“You don’t have to say right now, just—” Richie stops, brain catching up to current events. “Wait, what?”

“Yeah,” Eddie repeats. He laughs a little bit, the nervous laugh of someone about to jump with a bungee strapped to their feet. “Why not?”

He wants to be with Richie all the time, and obviously Richie wants him there too. You don’t just ask people to live on a boat with you if you don’t want them there. Eddie isn’t more attached to New York than he is Richie. So, why not? 

“Oh my god, _Eddie_!” Eddie politely ignores the shake in Richie’s voice. “Are you serious? I wish I could hug you right now, dude.”

“I’m serious.” Eddie confirms. He can’t stop smiling, so wide it hurts his cheeks. “Hey, does it have a name?”

“We’ll have to rename it!” Richie’s words fly out in a rush, excited and unable to hide it. “Oh shit. What about, uh, The Seaward? Get it?”

“Definitely not that!” Eddie laughs. 

“Okay, okay, um. The Sex Sea.” They don’t have to be on video call for Eddie to imagine Richie’s over the top wink. He snorts again. “Oh! The Salty Seaman!”

Eddie laughs, full and loud from his chest, bursting through the lazy silence of his bedroom. “No!”

“Fuck, Eds.” Richie is laughing too, like a warm blanket. “I love you, are you really serious?”

“Yes!” Eddie says with more emphasis. Will repeat it as many times as he needs to. “I am really serious. But you are _not_ naming it The Salty Seaman.”

“I don’t know…” Richie trails off. 

“Actually if I’m going to live on it with you we need to limit the seaman puns,” Eddie says. 

“Right.” Richie pauses, the picture of perfectly agreeable. “Should I get like a seaman jar?”

Eddie retches and Richie laughs like it’s the funniest sound he’s ever heard. 

“No!” Eddie gags again, exaggerated only as much as he needs to. “I was going to tell you I’m still in bed, but never mind, I’m not horny and I never will be again.”

Richie cackles even louder.

——

January. Richie puts on a fire in the living room and finds a movie to watch together. It’s one Eddie recognizes; they’d started watching it together a few weeks ago. Eddie fell asleep on his couch then, missed the ending, and woke up with a dead phone and a sore back. 

He tries to relax, really, but his neck is tense from his plane ride and his skin feels too tight around him. 

The discomfort must show because Richie watches him closely from the corner of his eye. When Eddie shifts and stretches his shoulders, rolling his neck again, Richie catches him. 

“You okay?” he asks. He asks it like he asks anything; on the verge of a laugh. It used to drive Eddie up the wall because he felt like he was being laughed at, but he knows better now. Richie doesn’t keep it a secret when he’s laughing at you. 

“Sore,” Eddie tells him. “Plane rides always make me tense.”

“C’mere.” 

Richie jerks his head and Eddie follows his lead without a thought, sliding closer on the couch and turning. 

The first press of Richie’s fingers on his neck is a shock. He presses firm, fingers broad and warm seeking the painful knot of muscle, making Eddie gasp when he finds it. 

It’s painful at first, Richie pressing hard with the tips of his fingers right where it’s most tender before he soothes it out with the flats of his fingers. Then, all at once, Eddie misses the distraction of the pain. Without it at the forefront of his mind all he can think about is how big Richie’s hand feels against the base of his neck, how warm he is, the strength in his wide fingers. 

It takes everything to control his breathing, and he can only hope that Richie excuses the flush he can feel burning in his skin as being caused by the pulled muscle and nothing else. 

He moans when Richie bears down hard with the heel of his palm. It’s mortifying and revealing and too much, too fast. 

Richie laughs, but he’s not laughing at Eddie this time either. It’s too strained, too unsteady. 

“Feel good?” he asks. Chasing validation or a last-ditch effort to push things back to _safe_ and _normal_ , Eddie can’t tell. 

He nods. Richie isn’t massaging anymore, his hand extends so his fingers splay out across Eddie’s neck, just grazing his collarbone. 

“Eds, I—”

Eddie turns. Catches the lost, hopeless look in Richie’s eyes. Kisses him. 

Richie kissing back exudes _relief_ , his shoulders drop and he practically sighs into it when they press closer. 

There’s a brief, shared look when they break apart, silent communication that ends in agreement and they’re moving again in an unsteady path toward Richie’s room where they fall into Richie’s bed, both of them a mess. 

When Eddie touches Richie, Richie looks surprised, like maybe he can’t believe this is real. And when Richie falls apart in his grip and comes with a shaking groan pressed against Eddie’s neck, Eddie feels powerful, a thrill zinging down his spine like electricity that says _I did that_.

He doesn’t know what to expect from Richie, he never does, but it’s not for Richie to kiss him again deep and raw. It’s not for his mouth to keep going to nip at his jaw, his neck, his nipple. His big hands touching everywhere, falling to the side of his waist where the worst of his scarring is. He pulls away to look. 

Then Eddie _does_ expect, when Richie opens his mouth. He expects something about the scar, something about near misses, or could have beens. 

Instead, Richie says, “Why the fuck do you have abs? You’re so hot, what the fuck.”

The sound Eddie makes exists somewhere between a choke and a laugh. He wants to return the sentiment, wants to tell Richie how much his broad shoulders and hairy chest and thick thighs turn him on, but the words get strangled and stuck in his throat when Richie gets his mouth on him again: his stomach, his hipbone, his erection. 

Richie knows what he’s doing, Eddie can tell at least that much right away. He feels a distant surge of jealousy for any man who found himself in this position before him, but it’s fleeting and vague and vanishes when Richie pushes down far enough that Eddie can feel the soft give of his throat. 

He tries to stifle his sounds, tries to steady his breathing so that he can last longer than a minute. He’s had blowjobs before, though not very often and most times a perfunctory effort at best. Nothing like this. Richie moving slow, reverent, curling his tongue and testing the limits of Eddie’s restraint. 

With his free hand, Richie cups his balls, and it’s such a shock that Eddie’s hand flies to Richie’s shoulder and grips hard. Richie moans at the pressure and the sound reverberates through Eddie’s nerves, makes him feel like he’s going to rattle apart at his joints. 

“Fuck, Richie.” Breathe in, breathe out. “It’s never felt like this before.”

Richie pulls away and Eddie is too deliriously horny to think about it when Richie climbs up over him and licks desperately into his mouth. He finds the bitter taste of himself on Richie’s tongue and doesn’t care in the slightest. Weaves a hand into Richie’s hair and sucks eagerly, holding him close. 

When Richie breaks away he returns to blowing Eddie with a renewed focus. The slow-going reverence replaced with something unmistakably more goal-oriented that Eddie immediately falls into. 

He loses all sense when he comes, vision whiting out and toes curling into themselves. It feels like it lasts forever, like he’ll never come back from it. 

Until he does. And Richie is still looking up at him like he’s dizzy and unfocused and—Eddie thinks with alarms blaring in his head—in love. 

——

April. Eddie calls Richie after work, just like he does every day. The second he pulls into a parking spot while walking back into his apartment. He thought about it all afternoon, how he would play it cool and act like everything is the same as always at first. 

Eagerness takes over the moment he hears Richie’s voice. He feels insane. 

“I turned in my notice.”

Richie is quiet in response until, finally, he sighs. He’s relieved. Eddie doubts Richie feared he wasn’t going to quit, but Eddie did drag his feet long enough he can understand the relief. 

“We’re really gonna do this, huh?” Richie asks. 

Eddie thinks of sunny days, the sound of the ocean. “Yep.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

They stay on the phone for another hour or two, through Eddie’s dinner, planning and talking. Eddie is prepared to sell everything he owns (with a few exceptions) and Richie wants him to hang onto more things. It’s not an argument, both of them too happy to drag it into one.

——

December. Eddie is in Chicago for work. It’s frigid already, even colder than New York, and it’s putting him in a rotten mood. 

The Losers all know he’s there because he messaged ahead to see if Beverly was in town to grab dinner one night. She splits her time between Chicago and Ben, currently doing some work up in Canada for a law firm. Of course he picked a week she’s away, not even with Ben but off with business lawyers, meticulously removing every trace of her ex-husband from her business. 

He’s missing a movie night with Richie, a meeting goes long and he misses his weekly call with Stan (and Patty!), he doesn’t get to talk to Ben or Bill or Mike outside of daily texts. It’s annoying, he misses them. 

Richie calls late on a Thursday. It’s dark and damp and dozens of tiny snowflakes are starting to fall while he’s waiting for his cab. Maybe he whines a little bit, about work sending him to fucking Chicago in winter, and how bad the drivers are here, how late they kept him out without having the decency to feed anyone. 

“You didn’t eat?”

“No!” Eddie barks. He’s distantly aware that not eating is probably the exact reason he’s so angry at all. “And I’m cold. I’m probably just gonna get back, shower, and I dunno, eat a stupid granola bar.”

Richie scoffs. 

“Sorry I’m being such a drag.” Eddie groans when he stretches his shoulders out for the hundredth time tonight. He hates calling someone to do nothing but bitch them out. “My cab’s almost here, you can go if you want.”

“I’m not busy,” Richie says. 

So he listens to Richie talk instead. He rambles about new material he’s writing, trying to plan some dates in a handful of cities, nothing major like a tour, but something. He has some late night shows booked after the new year that he’s nervous about; Eddie didn’t know he _got_ nervous like that. 

“You’ll do fine,” Eddie says. He’s feeling calmer now that he’s in the backseat of a cab. 

“Or I’ll crash and burn.” His voice is casual but Eddie knows he means his words. “Again.”

They’ve all seen the clip by now of Richie the night Mike called him. It would be difficult to call it anything _but_ a crash and burn.

“This is different,” Eddie assures him. “What’s your new stuff about?”

He wants to get Richie talking where he can just listen and relax in this cab, little to no expectation from him to respond too much. He likes listening to Richie talk, if he’s completely honest with himself. He has a nice cadence and the slightly nasal tone in his voice suits him, it’s cute. He won’t dare tell Richie that and give him that ammunition, but he can admit it to himself. 

Richie’s vague, but he does talk about his new material a little bit. Less about its content and more about the themes; growing up, feeling like a loser, getting old and still feeling like a loser. Eddie lets himself smile while he listens, sinking down into his seat. 

“You better not be falling asleep,” Richie says after a while. It makes Eddie jump in his seat where he was almost definitely falling asleep. “That’ll be the worst review I’ve ever gotten.”

“You weren’t even telling jokes,” Eddie grumbles. It was good timing though, he can see his hotel not far ahead. 

He pays, leaves, and hurries into the bright warmth of the lobby where he’s hailed down by a young man who, after a brief confused exchange, shoves a large warm plastic bag into his arms and disappears. 

“Hey, I gotta go,” Richie says before Eddie even reaches the elevator. “Enjoy your food.”

Eddie stops in his tracks. “I w—Wh—You ordered this?!”

“Yeah, you wouldn’t do it yourself.” Richie explains this like it should be obvious. Like they just go around buying each other food all the time. “Told them to look out for a guy who looks like a puppet with an anxiety disorder. Seriously though, my agent is calling for like, the fourth time.”

“Fucking—Jesus, okay go!” 

Richie ignored calls from his agent three times while Eddie fell asleep in a cab instead of listening to him talk. 

“Yeah, you’re welcome, asshole.” He can hear the smile in Richie’s voice. 

“Thanks.” Eddie thinks, then tacks on, “dickwad.”

The food is good. The receipt lists every allergy exception (a shorter list than a couple months ago, but still fairly extensive), does Richie just have those memorized? He’s so tired and hungry from his day the entire event mists in his eyes a little bit; he’s thankful he’s alone in this hotel and no one will ever know. 

——

May. The adaptation to living on the sea isn’t as hard as Eddie thought it would be. It’s strange to always be _moving_ , bobbing up and down with the rolls of the waves as they crawl toward the shore. 

It takes a while, but Richie does gradually learn to stop filling his coffee cups all the way to the brim like he does on land. It’s one thing to baby-step his way from kitchen to living room at a snail’s pace and another thing entirely to do it while the ground moves under you. 

And it’s loud! Eddie never considered the noise when he agreed to move.

When Eddie was in New York, somehow only a month ago, selling all of his belongings or otherwise leaving them in donation bins he can admit he felt insane. Not that he doubted being with Richie would work, he has no room for those doubts, it’s just scary to shed all of your worldly possessions to go live on the sea. He loves it, now. 

His suits? Gone. He doesn’t own a single goddamn tie. He brought his laptop with him out of an excess of worry over disconnecting, but they stowed it away within the first week and haven’t looked at it since. 

They'd rather play cards together, betting with a pool of whatever they have enough of: goldfish crackers, sour patch kids, peanuts. Some nights they ditch the candies altogether and play strip poker, or strip go fish, or strip whatever. Eddie usually wins, unabashedly distracting Richie by hooking a foot around his calf under their little diner style table. Neither of them care who wins if they both end up naked anyway. 

At no phase in his life has Eddie ever felt as endlessly insatiably horny as he does now, at forty, living in a boat with his best friend. It doesn’t feel possible sometimes, how much he wants Richie any time he sees him. 

He’s in the kitchen preparing to make them both coffee, fiddling with the kettle, when Richie slides open the door and roams in from the deck wearing the stupid sailor hat he bought for Eddie for move-in day. 

“Morning, captain,” Eddie greets.

It’s intended to annoy, to tease, to get a laugh. 

Instead, Richie flushes. 

It takes Eddie a moment to wrap his mind around. “Wait, me calling you captain can’t turn you on.”

“Uh, I got news for you, dude.” Richie tosses the hat onto the little sofa sat next to the helm, Mike’s scratchy blanket folded neatly across the back. “Everything you do turns me on.”

——

April. The rest of the Losers talk Richie out of selling his house, thankfully, because Eddie was beginning to doubt his ability to convince him alone. 

Similarly they talk Eddie out of selling or donating every single thing he owns, but only just barely. He donates anything he would wear in an office and all of his major furniture. Everything else he throws into boxes to send to Richie ahead of time. 

It feels a little insane, how prepared he is to ditch every remaining familiar thing in his life to go live on a boat with Richie Tozier after a single weekend and a couple months of long distance (often raunchy) phone calls. But how is it any more insane than anything else he’s gone through? How is it any more insane than using his expensive degree to send emails forty hours a week? 

Maybe it is insane, maybe it’s a little scary, but it’s thrilling too. 

He packs up the knives Richie bought him in the fall carefully despite knowing Richie already has a fully furnished kitchen. He can’t bring himself to get rid of them. Mike’s blanket stays, every outfit Beverly helped him pick stays… It starts to feel like the only things he has an emotional interest in holding on to have somehow been touched by the Losers.

——

June. Richie buys an acoustic guitar from some kid at the pier and brings it home. He doesn’t really know how to play, but he strums out little tunes and sings made up songs to Eddie when they’re hanging out with nothing else to do. 

Eddie likes it, even when the songs are more dirty limericks about his body than any kind of actual song. Richie’s voice sounds nicer than he believes it does, natural mimic that he is. 

He sings his own rendition of “Eddie My Love” with some frequency, cute version or dirty version depending on his mood. It’s often enough that Eddie finds himself humming it sometimes while doing idle work, rinsing dishes or folding laundry. Richie catches him once in the kitchen and smiles like he’s won the lottery and crowds Eddie up against the counter, hips to hips. 

——

September. Eddie finds a decent Airbnb to rent out, just until he can find something more permanent and still get out of the house he shares with Myra. Once she realized she couldn’t talk him into changing his mind about the divorce she took to giving him the cold shoulder and the atmosphere in their house became unbearable. 

He packs two bags of clothes and his laptop and chargers and just leaves. 

Beverly says she’s proud of him, which feels unearned. She’s the brave one, the one who made it out of her marriage to an asshole with her head high. He ran away in the middle of the day from a relationship that always encouraged the worst of each other. 

He feels like his life has just been unpaused after a couple decades and he’s surprised to find that the rest of the world didn’t pause with him. There’s so much catching up to do. He goes wild catching up on movies and television, following up with the Losers often with his opinions and reviews. 

It feels like he barely recognizes any of the actors in things, any of the songs on any soundtracks. 

He has too much time to _think_. He still escapes to the gym (where he tries basically every podcast recommended to him) but it’s too easy for his mind to wander while he’s running. 

He thinks about the divorce. Being single again. Dating. Marco at work already asked if he was _meeting people_ again, the papers aren’t even signed! 

Part of him is resigned to living on his own for the rest of his days, refusing to encourage any inklings of hope in him that he can find someone else. Dating has never gone well for him ever, why bother trying? 

It’s a scary stray thought that almost sends him tumbling off his treadmill. The thought that maybe he’s not as straight as he always thought he was.

For years Eddie struggled to find his place in this cycling debate that it felt like all men had ongoing opinions about. ‘ _What about you, Kaspbrak? Tits or ass?_ ‘

It was neither, always. He didn’t look at women like that, like slabs of meat. His marriage was about friendship, caring, he and Myra watched out for each other.

Sometimes, though, he’ll see a man at the gym and think… or see an actor in a sex scene and it will stir up feelings beyond jealousy at his good looks. He’ll see the way Ben and Beverly smile at each other, Beverly with Ben’s arms around her and catch himself thinking how nice it might feel to be held that way instead of thinking about holding a woman that way. 

Once the thought hits, it takes root immediately. Eddie can’t stop dwelling on it. Not in a bad way, though it does bring a certain dread with it. He never thought he would be learning things about himself this late in life, is all. 

——

November. It’s not that Eddie expected everything about himself to magically change after coming out, it didn’t happen when he got a divorce, so he knows it doesn’t just work like that… but he realizes one morning that it feels more like _nothing_ has changed, and that’s horrifying. He feels set free from the heaviest chains that were weighing him down, but every morning he turns back around and puts on his same old _Edward Kaspbrak speaking_ straight guy costume. 

He’s never really spent a significant amount of time thinking about the clothes he wore. They were expensive and from nice stores, which meant they were good quality, which meant they were good clothes. 

Now, though, he gets dressed in the morning with a newly critical eye and takes notice of how ill some of his clothes fit. He hates it, how they make it look like his shoulders slope or they don’t look good at his waistline or his pants aren’t properly hemmed. He does some covert lunchtime googling about gay fashion and is horrified to find bold prints and tiny tight shorts. 

“I want to dress gay,” he finally confesses to Beverly on the phone one night. He’s gotten desperate enough to swallow his pride and ask for help instead of floundering uselessly online. 

Beverly smiles and it’s not patronizing or overly-pleased in a telling way. She says she’s happy to help him and she’ll see what she can find. 

He has an email with lists and lists of shopping options within just a few hours, and after a moment of being overwhelmed by choice he buys some of the things she’s personally suggested. None of it is over the top wild or colorful, but he does feel a tiny bit rebellious when he buys a pair of pants in a light light blue, nothing khaki or denim or safe black slacks. It’s a start. 

——

January. Eddie wakes up in Richie’s bed alone. His room is wide and comfortable with the perfect amount of morning sunlight making it into the window through the leafy ferns planted outside. His bed is warm and the sheets smell clean, Eddie stretches out across the mattress with a satisfying pop in his back. There’s none of the distress of waking up in his own bed back home, no cold air seeping in through the walls and chasing him back under his blankets, the wood floor isn’t frigid when he steps out of bed and toddles into the en suite bathroom to take care of himself. 

He feels… good. Relaxed. Warm and comfortable and ready to find wherever Richie crawled out of bed to this morning. He has only a vague, bleary memory of Richie moving around the room, but he fell back to sleep before he could ask where he was going. 

Eddie grabs one of Richie’s t-shirts, hideous and too big, and pulls it on over his boxers. He steps out of Richie’s bedroom eager to see him again, mind still lost on the fact that he slept all night with Richie’s big arms around him.

He’s deep enough in his thoughts at first that he doesn’t recognize the sounds of multiple voices until they stop. He glances up. Richie’s little kitchen table offers a clear view straight down the hallway and Bill is sitting at it, coffee mug in hand, making direct eye contact with Eddie who just stepped out of Richie’s bedroom in his underwear. 

Gut instinct almost sends Eddie ducking into the main bathroom to hide, but the still-functioning part of his brain points out that this would do nothing but delay the inevitable. He stutters in his walk but carries on the rest of the way into the kitchen. 

“Oh, hey, uh—” Richie looks anxious, messing around with his cupboards grabbing sugar and mugs. “Coffee?”

Eddie nods, trying his best not to let the anxiety get its claws into him too. 

“I didn’t know you were in town,” Bill remarks. He knows, for sure. Bill isn’t always the most observant one of the group, but Eddie is standing there in Richie’s kitchen in his underwear with all the subtlety of… of something not subtle. Of Richie Tozier himself. He knows. 

“It was unplanned,” Eddie responds. He doesn’t spare Bill a glance, trying to communicate telepathically with Richie to work out what they’re going to say about this.

“A work thing?” Bill is offering them an out and they all know it. He loves Bill for it, for being considerate, the best. But he doesn’t want it. 

Richie looks at him and Eddie looks back. He nods, just slightly, and Richie’s shoulders sink. 

“Not for work,” Richie says. 

“Okay, um—” Bill sets his mug on the little round table. Eddie finally does spare him a glance and it’s easy to tell how awkward he feels. 

“We’re together.” He looks back at Richie. 

Richie blinks at him, eyes wide. When he smiles his overbite becomes more obvious, Eddie has noticed it on their group video calls sometimes, but it’s a completely different experience in person. It makes him look younger almost, even with the lines it exposes on his face as well. 

“Yeah,” Richie breathes. 

Bill takes the news well. There’s no reason he wouldn’t, but it’s still nice. He came to see Richie because he went radio silent after coming out to everyone and he was worried. 

He offers to leave, but if Eddie is honest with himself, he’s missed Bill too. So they hang out a while, they go to the tar pits and attached museum, which is kind of a morbid experience all around. They get dinner all together and Bill is normal and kind and congratulatory all at once. 

Back home, finally alone again, Richie drags Eddie back into his bed. He kisses Eddie a little, but eventually pulls away to sigh against his chest. 

“So.” He rubs his forehead against Eddie’s sternum. “Bill knows.”

“Yep,” Eddie agrees. He lifts one hand tentatively to the back of Richie’s head, unsure if they’re in a place where he _can_ do that. But Richie sighs when his fingers work into his hair and curl against the back of his head. 

“Sorry about that,” Richie mumbles. 

“It’s fine.” Eddie sighs his own little sigh, he pats down the back Richie’s messy hair. “I won’t lie, I was excited to have this just to ourselves for a little while, but I don’t mind Bill knowing.”

“And the rest?” Richie finally looks up, his chin digging into Eddie’s chest. 

“Well, if Bill knows…” Eddie twines and untwines the same strand of hair around his finger. “Should I call them?”

Eddie sends the message and ends up calling the Losers right there from Richie’s bed. There’s a moment of confusion, the room around him too bright to be his apartment in New York. The immediate observation makes him more nervous than making the call, but Bill is already there on video too. Bill knows and looks supportive and stays silent. 

Eddie flips the camera to show Richie sprawled out on his side, obviously in a bed. 

There’s general confusion, at first, when Richie waves at everyone. Understanding dawns one by one across the group until there’s such a buzz of overlapping noise he can’t make out what anyone is saying. They’re all smiling, though, so that means enough to him. 

Eddie assures the group it’s real, not some big prank, they’re together. And they are going to continue to be. 

After they hang up Richie kisses him into his mattress for the second afternoon in a row. Pulling close and wrapping all around him. He’s so big and warm and when he rolls his hips like liquid into Eddie’s it’s already almost too much to handle. 

His world narrows down to just this. Richie over him, grinding against him, calling him sweetheart while Eddie gets his hands anywhere he can touch. When Richie pulls at their pants and gets them skin to skin, Eddie wraps a leg around his hips, not giving him room to dare to pull away again. 

Their hips roll and Eddie promises he means it. He wants Richie, needs him, loves him. And Richie whispers it all back. ‘ _I know._ ’ ‘ _Me too._ ’ ‘ _I love you._ ’

Richie’s hairy chest brushes against his and makes him shiver despite the heat, sweat building just from skin contact. He clings desperately and all he can think is ‘ _this is mine now, I get to have this_ ‘ in a disbelieving cycle. 

——

June. Eddie studies the engine manual like he’s expecting a new pop quiz about it every day. An older man who lives with his wife in a boat a few plots down from them offers some insights when he sees Eddie out in the sun with his nose buried in the pages. Eddie listens to them all like gospel. 

It leads him, an hour later, to the cramped little room under the helm to where all the mechanical equipment is housed. He runs through the manual like a checklist, oil, fuel lines, spark plugs, belts. He finds a worn spot on a belt that’s _probably_ responsible for the weird noise they get sometimes when they kick on the engine and gets a little thrill through him at the prospect of fixing it himself. 

It’s not easy, getting the belt out of the complicated housing in the cramped space he has, but he manages. It feels like an accomplishment. 

“Eds?” Richie, returned from his trip to the grocery. 

“Down here!” Eddie calls back. 

He can barely make out the sound of Richie shuffling around for a minute longer before his footsteps come thundering down the narrow staircase to find Eddie. He doesn’t stop his work, digging through the mostly-organized boxes on the shelves behind him with replacement parts and a bunch of tools.

“I stopped at Charlie’s for din–” He cuts off at the final turn of the staircase. “ _Jesus_ , Eddie, warn a guy.”

“What?” He glances away from his search only long enough to catch Richie looking like he’s just been hit on the head. He’s leaning on the wall and clutching his chest. Eddie is dating a cartoon character.

“Wh–!” Richie gestures with one hand at Eddie. “This!”

Eddie glances down at himself. He’s a little sweaty from the exertion of pulling the belt out of the boat and a little smudged up from the oil and grease that comes from digging around an engine block up to your elbows.

“What?” He finds the replacement belt he’s looking for, sees the difference between it and the wear and tear done to the old one. “I’m learning how the house works.”

Richie crowds up behind him when he turns back to the engine, ready to wrestle the new belt into position. He’s close, arms wrapped around Eddie’s middle and hands pawing at the front of his shirt.

“You’re looking like a sexy little mechanic is what you’re doing.”

“Can you not be horny for five seconds?” Like Eddie has any ground to stand on, like he isn’t just as bad or worse at any given moment. Like he doesn’t shiver now, when Richie bites at the base of his neck.

“Don’t know why I’d start now,” Richie says. One hand slides up under the hem of Eddie’s shirt, fingers curled so his knuckles trace the trail of hair up to his bellybutton. He buries his nose in the crook of Eddie’s neck. “You smell good.”

Eddie spins in Richie’s arms to face him. He has to dodge when Richie thinks this means he wants a kiss, because he knows too well the slippery slope they would be starting on if he did kiss him.

“Give me fifteen minutes,” Eddie says, speaking slowly. “If you can do fifteen minutes I’ll let you come on my face.”

Richie’s eyes flash wide. He backs away with a couple unsteady steps, nodding rapidly. “Okay,” he peeps. He gets a little tripped up on the stairs, stopping halfway up to turn and yell back at Eddie, “I’m setting a timer!”

“Okay!”

Eddie works quickly, just as eager as Richie if he’s honest, following the instructions step by step and wasting no more time inspecting any other parts of the engine.

He finishes in twelve minutes.

——

February. The first time Eddie laughs out loud during an afternoon phone call with Richie, he watches several heads pop up over the tops of cubicles to find the source. He’s just getting back from lunch, making his way back to his office. Normally, he would hang up with Richie before getting back into the building, but they got caught up together talking about new movie releases. 

No one trusts their ears. Eddie Kaspbrak doesn’t _laugh_ and he definitely doesn’t do it while calling someone a dickhead over the phone (he usually sounds much grumpier when he does that). When he quickly ends the call with _Yeah, love you_ , he’s pretty sure he hears someone audibly squeak.

——

May. It’s a work in progress, Eddie learning to see himself as an object of sexual attraction. Like, he knows Richie is sexually attracted to him, he would have to be completely empty-headed to have not put that together in the last month of living together alone. 

They get off together often, more often than Eddie thought anyone their age reasonably would. And it’s fun in a way sex has never been for Eddie before. He and Richie talk and laugh and rib each other even in intimate moments. It’s surprising at first, but then it just makes _sense_ , the most natural conclusion of their usual behavior. He thinks, secretly, it’s very romantic. 

But that doesn't mean it fully registers that it’s _Eddie_ Richie is excited about. He knows what it is about Richie that turns him on. How just being in the same room as him drives him to distraction, which is rough because they only have like two rooms. 

There’s a separation though, in his mind, that exists between Richie wanting him and him being sexually attractive, he guesses. 

He’s just never felt this way before. Ever. Even when he was in college, young and horny and tasting freedom for the first time. His dates were all stale, the ones he did take to bed were rare and awkward. He thought meeting Myra, who wasn’t particularly interested in sex any more than just often enough to fill some Happy Relationship Checklist she must have had, was a blessing. 

Richie tells him things like ‘ _Everything you do turns me on_ ‘ and calls him hot or sexy or _a distraction_ like those things are just true. 

It’s not that he suspects Richie is _lying_ to him necessarily, but it doesn’t track how everything he says is true either. 

“Is that weird?” Eddie asks into the phone. 

He’d called Stan in his moment of stress, but Stan had promptly declared the conversation too weird to have about two of his closest friends and handed the phone to Patty. 

“It’s not weird that your partner finds you sexually attractive, no,” Patty assures him.

“When you say it like that it sounds stupid,” he groans. 

“It’s not stupid!” Patty admonishes. “And it’s not weird that you’re not used to it yet.”

“I guess.” 

“What about it are you struggling with?” She asks. Eddie feels bad for a moment, like he’s treating his friend as a therapist, but he remembers he was actually _trying_ to talk to Stan who handed him off because he’s an awkward idiot. 

“I just don’t get it,” he says. “Or if it’s even me, like maybe he’s just a horny person. Sorry if that’s weird.”

“You can only know if you ask,” she points out bluntly. It’s helpful, Eddie appreciates a straightforward answer, but she makes it sound so _easy_. “Stan and I only have a mutually enjoyable sex life—” He hears Stan in the background groan in agony “—because of lots of communication.”

“You’re right.” He isn’t happy to admit it, because there’s a stubborn part of him that insists this isn’t a big deal and shouldn’t matter, but she’s right. 

“Of course I am.”

——

April. Moving day comes sooner than Eddie expects it to. And he’s on a plane again to LA, no return flight booked, apartment keys left behind. Not a visit. His new home. 

Richie meets him at the airport at baggage claim, already pre-warned that Eddie has more bags than he alone can carry. He shoves a sailor hat onto Eddie’s head and they hug tight before they wait and wait for Eddie’s bags. 

The drive back to Richie’s—no, _their_ cute little coastal house is scenic. He can smell the salt in the air in fifteen minutes, he watches the tall palms that line the streets fly past, the back seat and trunk are stuffed full of everything he owns. 

It’s thrilling. The same thrill he gets every time he tells Richie he loves him and Richie says it back. 

“So, what are you feeling?” Richie asks inside the little foyer next to the laundry room. “Chinese? Burgers? Nap first?”

Eddie looks over at him from where he’s standing, carefully removing his shoes to place on the rack next to the door. Richie’s already removed his own shoes by stepping on and mashing the heels of course. The rack has space saved for Eddie, he notices. 

He almost laughs in his disbelief. After two months of wholly satisfying yet too impersonal phone sex, he had fully expected Richie to lift him over a shoulder like a caveman and carry him to bed as soon as they stepped through the door. 

There’s no way he can lift Richie over a shoulder, but he’s not going to wait around either. 

“Come over here,” he says. 

Richie steps toward him and Eddie pulls him the rest of the way, arms looped around his waist until they’re crowded back against the door. 

“Not hungry?” Richie asks. 

He bends to kiss Eddie exactly like Eddie wants him to. Something so tender it aches, the solid door at his back and the bright natural light shining in around them. He knows there’s work to do, he knows that just to his right the guest room is crowded with boxes of stuff he mailed ahead of himself.

He doesn’t care. He kisses Richie back like they have nowhere to be and nothing to do. 

His hands wander, touching everywhere he’s wanted to every time they’ve video called, still never daring to send a too easily hackable photo. Shoulders, arms, chest; soft everywhere but _strong_. 

Even on the verge of death Eddie remembers Richie carrying his weight like nothing and a distantly aware part of his brain thinking, _oh_.

“No second thoughts yet?” Richie asks. Still pressed tight into Eddie’s space, looking down at him like he’s something to be revered. The question is passed off like a joke but Eddie knows well enough the kernel of truth in there. 

Instead of reassuring, swearing he’s confident in his move, reminding Richie how much he loves him verbally, he reaches up to pull Richie down into another kiss. This one harsher, more insistent, giving all of himself into it. 

Richie melts against him, no space left between them, one hand finding its way gently to cup the back of his head and the other at the small of his back. It feels comfortable, warm. 

He feels wanted. 

“Okay,” Richie says so closely their lips brush when he speaks. “I guess not, then.”

In the bedroom, in Richie’s big wide bed with freshly cleaned sheets, they tumble and roll and kiss as much as they can. The kind of scene Eddie would write off in a movie as being too fake, too dreamy, too saccharine to be believable. 

They come to a stop, Eddie kneeling at Richie’s side, hands up inside Richie’s shirt just taking his warmth. Richie looks dizzy, reaches up to Eddie in response; a fistful of shirt and a thumb across his scarred cheek. 

——

August. Eddie runs to Richie’s side and kneels over him. 

“I think I did it man!” he yells, the first triumph he can remember having in a lifetime. “I think I killed It!”

Richie blinks up at him, dazed, disoriented. 

This happened before. Bev, floating in the air and not coming back to herself until something happened. What was it?

Ben kissed her, straight out of the fairytale movies they saw as kids. The steadfast childhood belief that true love’s kiss can fix anything. 

He remembers. He considers. He can’t be imagining the way Richie is looking at him, reaching up toward him. 

Stan screaming his name, the kind of panicked shriek that turns your blood to ice. Eddie doesn’t even get the chance to look up before he’s pulled out of the way harshly. Blinding hot pain in his side, he and Stan hurled deeper into an offset little cavern together. They roll and tumble over each other over and over. 

Blood, a lot of it. 

His side slashed open like nothing, likes he’s butter. 

All of his friends, panicked around him, propping him up against a large rock. 

Richie, taking off his jacket to press it to his side. 

“Are you hurt?” he asks Stan. They’d tumbled a lot and he’d hate to see Stan injured too, especially after what he already went through before he even made it to Maine. 

“I’m okay,” he says, but he’s crying. Eddie can’t remember ever seeing Stan cry before. 

He tells them about his leper and how he almost killed it. How it had felt so small and weak in his hands. They all have that power in them to use.

They have to leave him there, he can’t make it far at all with the pain radiating out from his side. Richie lingers, grabs his hand tight, it feels nice. 

“You’ll be okay, Eds.” His voice is insistent, like if he says it with enough force it’ll have no choice but to be true. 

“Don’t call me Eds, you know that I—” Eddie chokes and coughs, spitting blood. From his cheek, he thinks, his mouth has had that awful coppery taste for hours. “That’s probably not good.”

It’s meant to be a joke. Something stupid to make Richie laugh. He’s always had that need, a desperate thing, something satisfying about getting the funniest person he knows to laugh. 

It doesn’t work. Richie’s face crumples. A hand comes to Eddie’s cheek, the touch surprisingly gentle for someone so loud and broad. A bull in a china shop. 

He can hear his friends yelling and chanting. Winning. 

“Go help,” he insists. “I’ll be here.”

Richie’s head bobbles between Eddie and the rest of their friends. He holds Eddie’s cheek one second longer and stands, already screaming along with the rest before he’s even moving. 

It’s cold. Damp. Eddie doesn’t think about all the shitty water he’s walked through getting into his open wound. 

He wonders if this is what dying feels like. Kind of tired and woozy and cold. The movies always have the person saying they don’t feel anything, but he’s still hurting a lot. Is that good?

He spent years running from the fear of death, and here it is anyway. He’s not scared though, he finds. Not if he dies because he saved Richie, not if his death means the Losers all get out of here alive. 

He has to rest his eyes for just a moment. They’re tired and sore from all the flashing lights, he thinks. It’s fine, just a moment. 

“Eddie.” That’s Richie’s voice. It feels like no time has passed. “Eddie!”

It’s hard, the hardest thing he’s ever done, opening his eyes then. Everyone is crying and filthy. Richie is crouched in front of him, head bent forward so Eddie can see where his hair is thinning at the crown of his head. 

“Holy shit.” Stan this time, just behind Richie to the left. “He’s awake! Richie, holy shit!”

——

February. Eddie has never envisioned himself as a phone sex kind of person. To be honest he never saw himself as a very sexual person at all before Richie. 

Since January he’s felt demented, like an animal pacing its cage, long starved and eager for escape. He doesn’t know what to do with himself some days, and others it’s all he can do to stop himself from buying another ticket to LA and showing up at Richie’s again. 

Richie teases sometimes when they call, asking Eddie what he’s wearing in a salacious voice and then laughing like it’s a joke. But Eddie’s not laughing. 

“Nothing,” Eddie answers one night, interrupting Richie’s laughter. “A towel, I was in the shower.”

“Oh.” He sounds strangled, caught off guard. 

“What are you wearing?” 

“Underwear,” Richie says. “A t-shirt.”

“Which one?” Eddie lays back in bed, towel around his waist, enjoying unveiling the layers and gaining an increasingly vivid image of Richie in his own bed. 

“It has the, um, _pizza pizza_ guy on it.” Eddie knows it, ancient and soft from a million washes and comfortably stretched but not baggy. 

“Uh-huh.” Eddie hasn’t moved, hasn’t laid a hand on himself, enjoying listening to Richie slowly implode. If he pushes a little more breath into his _uh-huh_ than is strictly needed, who’s to say?

“Is this happening?” The sounds of springs squeaking when Richie moves. “Are we doing this? Is it happening?”

“If you want it to?” His easy confidence fades slightly, doubt creeping in that maybe Richie isn’t as wound up as a bowstring like Eddie is after all. 

“ _God_ yes.” Richie exhales the words as much as he says them. “I want to hear you come again.”

 _That_ launches Eddie from interested to desperate for it in an instant, his breath catches, he twitches beneath his towel. 

“You still in the towel?” Richie asks. 

“Not for long.” He’s struggling one handed to undo the tuck and hold his phone at the same time. 

“Are you hard?”

“Getting there,” Eddie says. Finally the towel falls loose and he rolls to seek out the lube he only ever bought to use alone. “You?”

“Yeah,” Richie confirms. “What d’you use? Spit?”

“Don’t make me gag, I’m not a fucking animal.” _Finally_ he touches himself, the first taste of relief. “I have lube.”

Richie moans a little breathlessly. 

“Does that do it?” Eddie asks. “Me saying the word _lube_?”

“I could get off to you reading an IKEA manual.” Eddie can hear faint movement from Richie’s end of the line, too distant to make out, but his breath comes a little shorter. “Tell me how to build a Dagstorp, Eds.”

Eddie laughs before he can catch himself, loud and hard into the dark of his room. He apologizes, trying desperately to stop giggling, afraid of ruining the mood. 

“I want you to laugh,” Richie says. Eddie didn’t know people did that, always figured if someone laughed during sex with him it’d be because they were laughing him. “Is it unsexy to say I want to kiss you?”

“No. I’ve been thinking about your mouth for a month.” He’s thinking about it now and twitching in his grip, twisting his wrist, gasping. 

Richie doesn’t reply other than to make a strangled ‘ _hrgk_ ’ surprised noise, which is… Eddie didn’t even say it to be sexy, he was just being honest. 

Then Richie does speak. “I thought about you too.”

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah.” Eddie can’t imagine about what; a kind of mediocre hand job? If he knew in advance that Richie was about to give him an earth shattering blowjob he would’ve done a little more. “How wet you get.”

Eddie’s face _burns_ , all the way down the back of his neck. It’s almost too much, too embarrassing, knowing this was something significant enough for Richie to remark on. “Really?”

“Yes, dude.” Richie sounds weirdly emphatic for a man in the middle of masturbating. And, weirdly, Eddie doesn’t mind being called _dude_ in the middle of masturbating. “It’s hot.”

Eddie… kind of gets it, he guesses. Not _it_ specifically, but the general idea. There are things about Richie that turn him on that are, to say the least, not your run of the mill turn ons. 

“Are you now?” Richie brings him back to the present, makes him look down to where his hips are rolling idly to meet his fist. He is leaking down over his knuckles.

“Yeah,” he confirms, his face still burns when he does. 

“Show me?”

Eddie chokes. “I’m not going to send you a picture, Rich, the cloud gets hacked all the time!” The anxiety of Richie’s phone having hackable nudes on it is enough to give Eddie hives. “You’re famous!”

Sometimes Richie wheezes when he laughs, something from smoking maybe. It’s charming in its own way, in that it suits him well. 

“No, like video call me,” he says. “Just you, me, and the NSA.”

So Eddie pushes the button to connect to video and flips the camera to the outside. The lighting in his room is dim, but it must be bright enough, because Richie hisses ‘ _Jesus_ ‘. 

Then he flips his own camera and Eddie understands the sentiment. His mouth goes dry at the image of Richie’s big hand stroking himself at a sedate pace, he takes in the whole image like he’s trying to memorize every last detail. It causes him to leak another pulse down over his fingers, but the embarrassment is well worth it at the sound it gets Richie to make in reaction. 

——

May. Eddie runs some mornings along the beach, appreciating the nicely paved pathways cut into the sand. He tries to go early when he does, before the crowds roll in and the walk gets overtaken with tourists and kids skating. Before the seals take off to hunt and splash, he can still hear them barking in the distance. He doesn’t get to see the sun rise over the ocean, he supposes, but it’s still a pretty sight. 

Sometimes he stops at the pier, watching the shops slowly turn their window signs to open. Most things aren’t operating yet, no one wants a hot dog at seven in the morning. He buys two coffees though and makes the short trek back to the dock, back to their little tethered houseboat and into the relative warmth inside. 

He drops the coffees in the kitchen and takes the three stairs down into the bedroom. He needs to shower and change, and Richie is right there still in bed. 

“Hey, Rich,” Eddie whispers. He makes his way up next to the bed, wanting to gently wake Richie up, reaching out to push his fingers through his hair. “There’s coffee in the—ah!”

Richie reaches out, lightning quick, to wrap his hands around Eddie’s waist and pull him down into bed. They twist and Eddie lands hard on his back with an audible grunt. 

“Asshole!” Eddie shrieks even though he’s laughing. He thwaps Richie with the clean shirt he grabbed to change into. “You scared me!”

“Sorry.” Richie doesn’t look sorry. He leans down into Eddie’s space and buries his face in Eddie’s neck. 

“Uh-huh.” Eddie squirms a little, trying to escape Richie’s octopus hold and failing. “And you were just faking sleep because?”

“Hoping for a peep show.” He pulls back away from Eddie’s neck to grin and pump his eyebrows. “You know how I feel about your sexy leggings.”

“They’re not leggings!” Eddie yells. “They’re thermal running pants!”

He squirms even harder when Richie leans in again and licks across Eddie’s neck, one hand unashamedly groping at his thigh through the thermal pants. 

“Richie, gross! I’m sweaty!” He finally does squirm free enough to climb back out of bed. He turns over his shoulder at the bathroom door, breathless from exertion. “I’m gonna get a spray bottle for you like a bad cat.”

Richie’s still laughing when he shuts the bathroom door. He showers quickly and comes out still thinking about the whole encounter. About Richie wanting to stare at him, wanting to touch him, licking across his skin even if he’s sweaty. It’s a rush, feeling so wanted. 

Eddie wanders out of the tiny bathroom in a pair of joggers and finds Richie still laying in bed. Their coffees have been moved to the bedside table. 

This time, Eddie joins him without needing to be dragged around. 

Richie rolls close again and buries his face right back in his neck. He doesn’t lick him this time, but stays there and breathes him in instead. 

“Have you always been like this?” Eddie starts. He wraps his arms up around Richie’s shoulders and Richie grunts to acknowledge him. “So cuddly, I mean.”

There’s a little patch of hair on each of Richie’s shoulders, small but present and noticeable. He whined about it one night after a shower until Eddie convinced him he likes it. He likes the masculinity of it. He likes everything about Richie.

Richie snorts. “Not really.”

“Neither have I.” Myra would sometimes hold his hand when they were in the car or sitting in their evenings watching TV, he’s never been like _this_ before though. “The people you dated weren’t into it?”

“What people?” Richie sounds genuinely confused. “Who was I dating?”

“I dunno.” Eddie shrugs the best he can while compressed under all of Richie’s weight. “People? You’re, like, _you_. Loads of people must have been after you.”

“Uh—” Richie’s laugh is a single harsh sound. “I appreciate the ego boost, dude, but you’re really overestimating my market value.”

Eddie knows a lot of Richie’s old standup was fake. He knows the straight bro persona was invented by the ghostwriters, run through tests to hit the broadest possible audience of college guys and washed up thirty-somethings most likely to drop the cash on live shows. Still, maybe he was assuming somewhere along the way that the stories about his sexual exploits and his needy girlfriends had some nugget of truth in them, carefully adjusted to fit the narrative. 

“I mean I messed around here and there,” Richie elaborates. “But never anything like this.” His voice goes quieter, like admitting the next part is difficult. “Everything with you is different just because it’s you.”

The sentiment takes Eddie by surprise. He knows things are vastly different for him in his relationship with Richie than anything in his past, but a big part of him thought maybe it was just because it was his first relationship with a man. He wonders then, would he be like this with just any man? Would he be this way with the cute barista or with one of the men from his fleeting attempts at using a dating app?

He finds himself doubting. 

He isn’t with Richie because he’s a man, he’s with Richie because he’s _Richie_ and he loves him. 

It stands to reason, then, that Richie is thinking the same thing. Richie hasn’t been like this when he’s dated in the past, he wasn’t always so cuddly, touchy, flirty, horny. Those are all Eddie-specific responses.

——

July. Eddie jumps when Richie sidles up behind him on the bench outside, hooking his chin over Eddie’s shoulder and digging in close. 

“Whatcha readin’, Eds?” 

Eddie locks his phone and drops it onto his lap, leans back into the soft warmth of Richie’s chest, content when Richie’s arms curl around his waist and hold on. “Just some articles.”

“Looked serious.” Eddie knows he isn’t prying, isn’t trying to pull information out of him because he doubts him, but it still feels like he’s hiding it. 

“I was reading about—” he flounders for the phrasing appropriate for the upper deck of the boat. It’s not like there are a bunch of people around, but there are neighboring boats that could _potentially_ hear him. “That thing we did last week.” 

“Ohh. You mean—” Richie removes one of his hands from holding Eddie to gesture in front of him, an upward twisting motion with two of his fingers.

Eddie grabs his hand on reflex, mortified not at the actual event but at the crudeness of the hand motion. “Yes, god, that.”

“What about it?” Richie’s hand drops back down to rest against Eddie’s stomach and Eddie doesn’t let go of his hold, pressing two of his fingertips against the middle knuckles of Richie’s fingers.

“It’s not as common as I thought it would be.” It feels stupid to admit it now, that he unknowingly had penetration on this weird pedestal, but Richie never minds when Eddie looks a little stupid. “I guess I built it up in my mind as this ultimate goal.”

“You said you liked it?”

“I did,” Eddie reassures, rubs a thumb across the back of Richie’s hand. “I liked it.”

And he _did_. He liked Richie’s fingers in him, the slow stretch and the full feeling of the moment he pressed flush, hips to hips. He liked Richie curled over and around him while he moved, warm and soft and _safe_. It was hot, and it felt good, he certainly hadn’t faked any of his enjoyment.

“But?” Richie prompts, pulling him out of his memories.

Eddie turns in his seat. He needs to see Richie’s face, needs to know he isn’t reading any of this as rejection.

“But I think I prefer–” Eddie looks him over, knows Richie catches his gaze lingering at his mouth before they meet eyes again. Eddie remembers they are still outside and his earlier censorship. “–other things we do more.”

Other things. The engine room, Richie’s skilled hands, Richie’s thighs slicked and pressed tight around him.

Richie’s face splits into a crooked devious grin, looking for the world like he can read every thought in Eddie’s head. “Other things.”

“Is that okay?” Eddie asks, still struggling to get a read on Richie’s smile.

“’Course, Eds.” Richie kisses his temple, offering immeasurable comfort in one small gesture. 

“You liked it, though?” He knows Richie did, could hear it in the desperate sounds he made, could feel it in the way Richie clung to him when he came.

“Uh, I don’t know if you’ve noticed—” He kisses Eddie’s temple again, his hairline, his cheek. The frames of his glasses press into his skin. “I like everything we do.”

Eddie can’t help but laugh. His smile pressing into Richie’s shoulder. “I’ve noticed.”

Richie pulls away at the shoulders, still sitting close but leaning with an elbow on the back of the little cushioned bench they’ve got up here. Eddie loves when Richie looks at him. He spent years trying very hard to not be looked at like this, too real and too scary. He loves it now, though, knowing Richie _sees_ him. He loves the shitty smug smile Richie is wearing. He watches Richie’s eyes bob and bounce across his face and doesn’t feel the need to shy away.

“I want whatever you want,” Richie says. He winks, all over-the-top performance. “Anything.”

He continues before Eddie can respond, still working on digesting the sentiment.

“It’s not some be-all end-all for us, you know?”

“I think I’m realizing that,” Eddie says. He echoes the big grin that appears on Richie’s face with one of his own. “I’m not saying like, _never_.”

“Sure.” Richie shrugs. “Seriously you could just stand there doing nothing in your tube socks and it would do it for me.”

Eddie snorts loudly and rolls his eyes.

“You have literally the least amount of pressure you could imagine,” Richie continues like Eddie didn’t just laugh at him. “It could be never, I wouldn’t care.”

“Okay, I get it.” Eddie laughs at the absurdity of it all. He falls forward so his forehead lands on Richie’s chest, pleased when the arm Richie isn’t leaning back on wraps up over his shoulders. There was a time in his life, not very long ago at all, where he never could have seen himself having this conversation so bluntly and easily. “I love you.”

Richie kisses the top of his head again. “Love you.”

——

April. Eddie pulls his shirt up over his head, no room to be worried about scars or anything, not when Richie’s hands gobble up as much space on his skin as they can manage. 

It’s a little overwhelming to have Richie here in front of him finally, in person. To not have to fall into the usual descriptors and wishes and, at most, commands to go faster or slower. He palms against the front of Richie’s shorts, feeling the entire length of him. 

It’s different now from January, things aren’t completely fevered and rushed. He has the mental capacity to think and he wants to use it to give Richie better than a kind of awkward handjob. 

“What are you feeling?” Richie asks. He’s still looking up at Eddie like he can’t believe he’s real. 

“I don’t know.” He swallows, fumbles a minute with Richie’s zip. “Paralyzed by choice.”

“Whatever you want,” Richie says. “Anything’s on the table. Weird stuff, nasty stuff, I guess we should move to the shower if it’s real nasty though.”

Eddie does not let himself think about what nasty things would move them to the shower. 

“Just regular stuff, please.” It feels like he’s ordering from a menu. 

“One regular stuff comin’ up.” Richie lifts up on his heels, hips in the air, to tug his shorts and underwear down at the same time. He’s still in the middle of taking his shirt off when Eddie reaches out to wrap a hand around him and he jumps. “Warn a guy.”

“I’m gonna touch your dick,” Eddie warns, both of them ignoring that he already is. 

He takes his time processing the feel of a dick other than his own in his hand. It’s a little stupid, considering he’s already had this dick in his hand once before, but this is different. Not a sudden explosion but a first of what will be many now that they live together. 

Richie doesn’t seem to mind him taking his time to absorb it all, shuddering when Eddie trails his thumb along a vein and presses a tight circle just under the head. 

Memories of the last time Eddie was here in this bed rise. The way Richie made him feel with just his mouth. He wants to make Richie feel that good. 

“Can I blow you?” He asks. 

Richie makes a sound like he just sprung a leak and all his hot air is escaping. A wheezy _hhhhhh_. He twitches in Eddie’s hand and Eddie feels his first rush of power quickly overtaking his nerves. 

Briefly, he considers stumbling through some kind of warning; ‘ _I haven’t done this before_ ’ or ‘ _Don’t expect much_ ,’ but he changes his mind. Richie already knows perfectly well Eddie hasn’t done this before and he still wants him there. 

So he stops worrying about it and leans over to lick broad over the underside of Richie’s erection, following the exact path of his thumb earlier. He repeats the motion, and then again, basking in the feel of it. The kind dazed feeling in his head blanking out all other external stimuli. 

One hand holding Richie steady, he wraps his lips around him and holds there, just observing all the space Richie takes inside his mouth. Dipping down, pressing into his soft palate, tongue wandering hot and needy. He marvels at the feeling of Richie getting impossibly harder with just a little effort. 

It doesn’t take a lot of digging to find the memory of Richie doing this to him, it’s been at the forefront of his mind for months, resurfacing any time it had half a chance of taking root. He remembers vividly the things Richie did that made his toes curl, and he echoes them back as best he can, hopefully making up for any lack of skill with pure enthusiasm. 

Richie does seem to be enjoying himself, at the very least. When Eddie opens his eyes, lids heavy vision hazy, he sees Richie’s fists in his bedsheets, the way his knees have fallen wide apart, how his chest heaves with his breaths. _That_ makes him feel good, too. He got Richie there, he made him feel like that. 

He grabs for one of Richie’s hands, intending to lead it to his head, curious to find what the feeling of Richie’s fingers tugging at his hair does for him. He’s surprised when, instead, Richie tangles their fingers together and holds on like it’s the only thing keeping him tethered. 

“Eddie!” Richie’s hand holds tighter and his breath comes shorter. Eddie hollows his cheeks on his next draw up just to see what happens. “Fu-uck, Eds, wait.”

It’s a shock somehow, when he pulls away, how wrecked Richie looks. His face is flushed a pink that spreads down to his chest, showing up well on his pale skin. He’s so hard it looks almost painful and Eddie observes the shine he realizes half a second later is his spit. He did that. He wipes across his chin with the back of his arm just as Richie opens his eyes, and he makes a weirdly feeble noise in response. 

“What?” Eddie’s voice sounds rougher than he expected it to. 

“I didn’t—”“ Richie swallows roughly. “Didn’t want to just come in your mouth uninvited.”

The thought of it shoots off like fireworks in his gut even though he has to admit he wouldn’t have appreciated it as a surprise. 

“What are you, a vampire?” Eddie asks. 

Richie barks a loud breathless laugh. “Fuck, I love you.” He sits up to kiss Eddie, arm over his shoulders pulling him close. “Can I come on your chest?”

Eddie nods in a rush, getting more of a thrill from the suggestion than he would have ever expected to. That feeling only grows when Richie turns them both and Eddie falls to his back on the mattress, flung there weightlessly. 

Pinned down, he feels… not _small_ , but reminded of Richie’s strength, his size. And when Richie comes over his chest, he feels _claimed_. It’s good. He wants to feel claimed like this. Wants to smear it in and be marked as Richie’s forever. 

Richie sits back on Eddie’s lap, still in the nice jeans he bought at Bev’s suggestion, his hips press right down to where Eddie is hard and desperate for the pressure. It makes him groan, for the first time all afternoon really taking note of his own needs, of how turned on he got just from having Richie in his mouth. 

Sliding farther down Eddie’s legs, Richie finally pulls open his jeans and slides them down and off, boxers following right after. Richie whistles a falling note, something impressed, maybe?

“Look at you,” he says. He peeks up, waiting for Eddie to meet his eyes. “You can come wherever you want, free reign.” Then he swoops in and swallows Eddie deep.

——

June. Richie learns a simple reggae chord progression online and creates his own song he lovingly titles “ _I want to eat Eddie’s ass in the engine room_.” Initially these are also the only lyrics, but over a week or two they expand into something a little more… descriptive. 

Eddie reads about it in secret, including a horrifying article written by a guy who refuses to let the multiple parasites he’s contracted dampen his enthusiasm. He watches a couple of videos when Richie is out that don’t exactly convince him he’ll be into it either. 

For all the reading and all the videos he watches, he forgets to take into account how much he loves Richie’s mouth. 

“Fuck _me_ ,” he groans into the wood of the engine unit cover, head cradled in the crook of his elbow. 

Richie’s hands are gripping his hips tight and hot. Eddie appreciates the pressure not only because the strength in Richie’s large hands turns him on but also because his knees are like jelly. Without Richie holding him up he feels like he would drop to the ground into a puddle. 

He’s babbling, he can feel it, he has no idea what he’s saying anymore and he doesn’t care. Richie is taking him apart molecule by molecule with his tongue and, god, might even leave bruises on his hipbones. 

Eddie chokes on a sob against his forearm. He’s thankful Richie is kneeling behind him for this, can’t see his jaw clenching, his eyes rolling, the fist he has clenched in his own hair. 

There’s nothing he can do about Richie hearing him though. His desperate sounds, moaning throaty, gasping Richie’s name, curling his toes against the floor. 

Richie pulls away and Eddie feels exposed at the way those wide hands don’t leave with him, feels almost embarrassed at how much he misses the burn of Richie’s stubble against too-sensitive skin. 

“Good?” Richie asks. His thumb massages against Eddie’s flesh and Eddie imagines it wandering lower, pressing right against where his tongue just was, and his neck and ears burn hot. 

“No,” Eddie snaps. “I sound like this because I’m bored.”

Richie laughs. “Leaking like a faucet ’cause you’re bored too, huh?” 

Eddie groans again, embarrassed this time, knowing Richie is exactly right. He can feel it himself. 

Richie’s voice sounds wrecked, deeper than usual, smug because he knows exactly what he’s doing. He knows how affected Eddie is and he loves to be able to do that. He’s told Eddie so directly, that being the one to get Eddie so desperate gets him off. 

Twisting a little to look over his shoulder at Richie, Eddie snaps again. “Would you shut up and—ah!”

He doesn’t get to finish his thought. Richie pushes right back in where he left off, tongue shifting from soft and broad to firm, his jaw working so that Eddie can feel his stubble against his skin again. 

Eddie collapses, folding back over the engine cover, boneless. He’s so on fucking edge just from this and once Richie reaches up to get a hand around him it all falls apart rapidly. He shakes and trembles with Richie wrapped around him, the only thing holding him up. 

After, when the ground feels solid under his feet again, he turns and swallows Richie down, holding his hips against the hard floor. Richie hasn’t touched himself the entire time and Eddie can tell; it looks painful how hard he is, and it takes no time at all for him to come like he’s surprised by it. 

It doesn’t stop him from singing the same song again and again, but it does give him inspiration for additional lyrics. 

——

May. Eddie takes naps now, sometimes, something an Eddie before Derry would never have dreamt of doing. Naps mess with the circadian rhythm of the body, they’re not productive, he grew out of naps after kindergarten. 

Richie has taught him better. 

Sometimes a nap helps with a bad mood or pulling through a headache, but sometimes they just feel good. Eddie is still learning to indulge. 

It’s a gray morning and the clouds don’t pass through breakfast. “No going out to the water today,” Eddie remarks. They don’t go out every day, but it’s nice every so often to get away from the business of the docks. The sea is quiet. 

“Perfect nap weather,” Richie says. His gaze is directed out the window next to their teensy dining table at the clouds. 

It’s not a surprise, then, when Richie drags him by the hand straight back to bed after they eat. Dishes in the sink, unwashed, and Eddie barely cares. He curls up around Richie’s back and buries his face in the warmth of his neck, breathes in the smell of him and snuggles down deep. 

He wakes up alone in a warm sunspot on the bed, stretched out on his stomach with one leg bent up in front of him. It’s not unusual to wake up alone, especially after naps. Richie tends to sleep in short bursts even overnight, waking up and reading on his phone with the brightness turned way down or wandering out of bed for water. 

Eddie finds him out on the deck in the sun, the smell of rain still lingering in the air. He’s wearing a shirt with parrots on it hanging unbuttoned, looking very focused on the complicated knot he’s tying to secure the now-opened canvas tarp they use when they want to have a little shade on the deck.

Eddie snaps his mouth shut where he was poised to call out. Richie hasn’t noticed him yet, all of his attention singularly on the rope twisted in his fingers as he pulls it taut and stands at his full height to move onto the next anchor point and do it again. He takes the time to really look at him. His hands, big and strong, have gotten a little rougher with some time on the sea. His arms, his chest, everything exposed in what may not quite be confidence yet, but isn’t so shy either. His beard, growing in full and grey streaked. Eddie never expected it to be so hot when Richie first announced his intent to stop shaving. 

He wants. He can already feel the phantom stretch in his jaw. It all sends a little tendril of heat unfurling in his gut.

Richie tightens this knot and turns to fix up the other side, finally spotting Eddie standing just outside the sliding door looking over at him.

“Hey.” Richie grins at him, eyes all squinted and face contorted against the bright sunlight instead of just wearing sunglasses like a normal person. He turns to look back over the ocean and then back at Eddie. “Looks like sun after all, thought maybe I’d bust out the grill.”

“Mhm,” Eddie agrees, distracted. “You should come back downstairs.”

Richie looks confused at first, unsure of what Eddie is being vague about, but he can see the moment the connection comes together in his mind.

“Ooh, Eds.” His expression shifts into something blatantly over confident, something put on like a mask, Eddie hates how much it _works_ for him. He leans one forearm on the structure above his head, hip cocked, full breadth of his chest exposed. “Are you saying you’re desperate for some seaman?”

Eddie knows what he’s doing, knows the inner workings of Richie’s brain as easily as he knows his own. He wants the playful bickering, wants Eddie to call him disgusting and roll his eyes and pop the bubble of tension around them. Some days he’ll play into it, it’s fun for him too, but other days he won’t. 

Today is an other day. 

“If I say it, will it work?”

Richie only looks at Eddie, arms dropping to his sides and canvas tarp abandoned. 

“Richie, come back downstairs,” Eddie says. “I’m desperate for some seaman.”

The laugh that escapes Richie’s mouth is weak, barely more than a breath. His mouth twitches in the direction of a smile but doesn’t quite make it there. He looks rattled.

It makes Eddie smile, pleased to see it actually did work after all. Even more pleased when Richie ditches the canvas to stomp across the deck over to him, already halfway through the door by the time Richie gets there. 

Richie doesn’t quite pick him up and carry him back to bed once he catches up, but it’s a damn near thing.

——

July. Eddie is laid out on the small sofa next to the helm where Richie is seated. They’re heading out onto the water today for a few hours of fishing. Richie will fish, catch something, feel guilty and toss it back into the water; Eddie will read another chapter of a book out loud from his bench and they’ll ultimately return to the dock and go eat somewhere on the pier instead. It’s already old routine and Eddie enjoys it every time.

They don’t go out far, they can’t, their little boat will do alright with some wind and waves but probably wouldn’t make it if things got rough. They stick to where the waters are calm and make up stories about the cliffside houses at the shore.

He likes watching Richie behind the wheel. Something about it so deeply attractive to him.

Eddie had started out seated, there to keep company while they move along. He’s more comfortable now, and from his pillow he has a better view of Richie’s profile anyway.

It’s an admirable profile, he thinks. Cute rounded nose that Eddie both loves and envies, strong jaw, sharp chin. He has smile lines even when his face is relaxed, crows feet and another high up on his cheek, Eddie’s favorite. Even clean-shaved as he is now there’s still the hint of shadow where his beard will grow in thick and full. (Something Eddie actually does envy, his own beard growing in patchy and never really filling in everywhere.) If he reached out and touched the skin would feel perfectly smooth, but he can still see it.

And he _could_ reach out and touch Richie’s face, run his thumb across the line of his jaw for no other reason than wanting to and Richie wouldn’t mind it at all. Would like it, probably. Would look over at Eddie knowingly and tease him, but would never tell him to stop.

Something in that offers Eddie a sense of security he can’t remember ever having in his life. Maybe it’s sad, in a way, that he only has that now on his way into middle age, but he doesn’t harbor any bitter feelings about it. He knows Richie better than he knows anyone else he ever has or will meet, and Richie knows him just the same. He loves Richie, every single day, and he feels loved in return every day.

Richie does catch him staring. He always does.

“What are _you_ lookin’ at?” he asks in his _old timey mobster_ voice.

“The glare of the sun on your big-ass forehead.”

Richie’s laugh is loud and goofy and high-pitched, breaking off into a snort. He spins the seat around to face the couch and leans over, still grinning like Eddie just delivered the funniest joke ever told, and kisses him. Eddie stretches up into the contact, craning his neck a little to reach and take it deeper than Richie had apparently intended, based on the surprised little sound he makes when Eddie licks at the seam of his lips. 

Eddie pushes him away after a moment, hand at Richie’s cheek. “Don’t crash our house.”

——

December. Eddie holds no expectations to make it to midnight on New Year’s Eve. He hasn’t bothered trying in years with the knowledge that staying up late and getting drunk will only end in suffering the next day. 

He does drink with the Losers, though, on a video call. Mike is coming to stay with him in a few weeks, but for now he’s alone in his little apartment with a half-drunk bottle of wine. 

It’s noisy in a comforting way, everyone chattering and laughing and drinking more and jeering at each other over nothing. Eddie doesn’t watch the stupid ball drop, and he gets mixed reactions when he answers that he’s instead watching the Twilight Zone marathon. 

“You’re not watching anything!” Mike laughs harder than he maybe normally would, giggly and flushed from his own fair share of alcohol. “Your eyes are closed!”

Eddie peels his eyes open with significant effort. “I'm trying! It’s late!”

“It’s ten thirty, dude,” Richie teases. 

“Fuck off.” There’s no energy behind his words, honestly too tired to get heated. He blinks over at the faces of his friends, all of them smiling and visibly at various stages of completely blitzed. “Fuck, I love you guys so much.”

“Awww!” Beverly yells. “Eddie’s _drunk_!”

“You are too!” he yells back, falling right into the trap of admitting he is drunk. 

Whatever. He’s happy. It’s been almost half a year since the most harrowing experience of his life and he came out of it with this whole family he felt the absence of for two decades. 

His eyes fall to Richie’s little square on his screen. They often do and he knows it, he’s beginning to suspect some of the others are noticing, but he still can’t make himself stop. 

He just can’t stop thinking about the way Richie is with him compared to the other Losers. Buying him dinner in Chicago really set him off, looking at the past few months with a more keen eye.

Richie often does things for Eddie that make him feel _cared for_ without pushing into his boundaries about being _taken care of_. The knives, dinner, the movies, talking when he knows Eddie just wants to listen. It’s all perfectly deliberate, Eddie’s sure of that now. And he knows, with the clarity of a person just on the other side of too drunk to hide from his feelings, that it’s because Richie wants him as much as he wants Richie. 

He thinks, with a little time, he’ll get to have him. 

——

August. All of their mail still goes to their house that is, in all reality, not all that far from the docks at all. They don’t go back all that often, but it’s there for when they need it, as they surely will in the winter months. Eddie’s gotten used to doing laundry by hand between two buckets, he doesn’t really mind it anymore. 

Richie’s work is pretty much coordinated by email, so physical mail just isn’t often on their minds. 

Richie does a check-in with the house though. Make sure it’s secure, nothing inside is falling apart, and he brings back an armful of hoodies (the nights are getting colder) and a couple pieces of mail. 

“From Bev.” He tosses a plain envelope at Eddie’s chest. 

Inside are two pieces of paper. One white, when unfolded, has a handwritten note from Bev on it. 

‘ _Spotted at the supermarket, wanted to make sure you had a copy :)_ ‘ She signs off with a heart. 

The other paper is glossy, obviously torn from a magazine. It’s them standing out on the deck of the boat in the sun with the tag “ _Seaside Romance_!” and the tease of a story about ‘ _one comedian finding love at sea_ ‘.

What really gets his attention are the pictures. It’s a series of three. The first Eddie gesturing sharply with a stern look on his face and Richie standing right there, hands on his hips. Eddie’s expression suggests _yelling_. Richie’s, slightly less visible due to the angle, looks amused. 

The second is clearly only moments later since their positions are nearly exactly the same, only they’re both smiling. Eddie is mid-head toss, mouth open, the way he does when he really laughs hard. 

The third has them standing close, Richie hunched over at his shoulders with a hand held against Eddie’s jaw. They’re kissing, Eddie’s eyes shut but a smile still playing at his lips. He’s never seen a picture of himself kissing before, and it’s weird, but not bad. It looks warm, he thinks. The love he feels when they kiss is plainly visible in the image and he thinks he loves that. That anyone can see what they have together without needing to be told outright. 

“What is it?” Richie comes back from the bedroom, hoodies all put away. 

“We got papped.” He holds out the magazine page for Richie to take. 

Richie snatches the page from his hand. He doesn’t look anxious, exactly. He’s _Out_ , people know about Eddie at least in the vague sense, but this will be the first they’ve been seen together. Redondo Beach isn’t exactly crawling with celebrities so they’ve managed to find some relative peace in town. Something about that first is a little nerve racking. 

His eyes go soft, though, the longer he looks over the page. He glances back up at Eddie and smiles. 

They pin the page up above their little couch and keep it there.

**Author's Note:**

> I again made a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7bvvXJdmS34tiwzSFGsZ85?si=LLgCGqi_QLaefG1bwKJ7Aw) for this one, enjoy!


End file.
